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WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION

Finalist for the Orwell Prize * Shortlisted for the Moore Prize * Longlisted for the PEN Galbraith Award for Nonfiction * Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize

International Bestseller

A New York Times Editors’ Choice

Named one of the 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 by The New Yorker

Named one of TIME’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Economist

Named one of the Best Books of 2023 - Literary Nonfiction by the Financial Times: “This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel.”

Named one of the Best Books of 2023 - Politics by the Financial Times

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Republic

Named a Best Book of 2024 by Foreign Affairs

Named a Best Book of 2023 by Mother Jones

Named one the 11 Best Books of 2024 by the Los Angeles Review of Books

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Forward

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Millions

Named one of The New Statesman’s Best Books of 2023

Named a Best Book of 2023 in The Irish Times

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Irish Independent

Named one of Booklist’s Best Books of 2023

Named a Best Book of 2024 by El Mundo

Named a Most Valued Book of 2024 by El Nacional

Named the Number One Best Nonfiction Book of 2024 by De Morgen

Named a Top Ten Book of 2024 by De Standaard

Named one of the five best works of literary nonfiction of 2024 by Het Parool

Named a Best Book of 2024 by De Tijd

Named a Best Book of 2024 by Trouw

Named a Best Book of 2023 by Responsible Statecraft

Named a Best Book of 2023 by Just Security

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Stacks

Named a Best Book of 2023 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Named a Best Book of 2023 and 2024 by The Hindustan Times

Named a Best Book of 2023 by How To Be Books

Named one of Yuval Noah Harari’s 11 Recommended Reads of 2023

Named an NPR Book of the Day

Named one of the best books to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the Financial Times

Named one of 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall by The New York Times

Named one of the best reviewed books of October 2023 by LitHub

Named one of 10 Books to Read in October by The Los Angeles Times

Named to Foreign Policy’s Best Books for Understanding the Israel-Hamas War

Named one of Vogue’s 5 Books to Understand the War Between Israel and Hamas

“A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations.”
—Board of The Pulitzer Prize

“A powerful evocation of a two-tiered society.”
—The New Yorker, named one of 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023

“Searing…essential.”
—Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

“Magnificent ... a piercingly forensic account ... The book does what all good stories should do—it unfolds both minutely and epically at the same time. It does not moralize, and yet it does not shirk its responsibility to knock our sense of comfortable balance all to hell.”
—Colum McCann, The Irish Times, named a Best Book of 2023

“Nathan Thrall’s book made me walk a lot. I found myself pacing around between chapters, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences just in order to be able to absorb the brutality, the pathos, the steely tenderness, and the sheer spectacle of the cunning and complex ways in which a state can hammer down a people and yet earn the applause and adulation of the civilized world for its actions.”
—Arundhati Roy, Booker Prizewinning author of My Seditious Heart

“A vital, important book.”
—The Washington Post

“I know of no other writing on Israel and Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and understanding... One could read the book as a précis of modern Palestinian history embedded in the personal memories of many individuals, each of them drawn in stark, telling detail. To get to know them even a little is a rare gift, far more useful than the many standard, distanced histories of Palestine.”
—David Shulman, The New York Review of Books

“A quietly heartbreaking chronicle.... At any time, this scrupulous, salutary work would strike readers hard. Just now, it arrives in a cultural landscape shredded by assumptions that sympathy and understanding run only down a single route.... Not a word of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama encourages one-eyed compassion or selective truth-telling.”
—Financial Times, named a Best Book of 2023, Literary Nonfiction; named a Best Book of 2023, Politics

“Thrall is one of the few writers who can combine vivid storytelling with in-depth analysis of the occupation ... his expertise allows him to shuttle nimbly between the viewpoints of frantic families and Palestinian leaders as well as Israeli officials and nearby settlers.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“The best account I've read of how the occupation has made life for Palestinians oppressive, hopeless, and nearly unlivable.”
—David Remnick, The New Yorker Radio Hour

"A necessary education, not only about injustice but about people who deserve to be remembered and honored for the persistence of their love and decency."
—Mary Gaitskill, n+1

“It is hard to think of another book that gives such a poignant, deeply human face to the ongoing tragedy of Palestine. Thrall’s evocation of both a terrible crisis and the daily humiliations of life under occupation is nothing short of heartbreaking.”
—Adam Hochschild, National Book Award finalist and author of American Midnight

“A book that is … by turns deeply affecting and, in its concluding chapters, as tense as a thriller.… Such storytelling is in itself a radical act, for it insists on humanising those who are so often discussed – especially at times of intense violence, like now – solely as constituent parts of a category: ‘Palestinians.’ … Thrall’s achievement is to make us see [the occupation]– and feel its injustice – afresh.”
—Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

“If it’s hard to make people care about someone they’ve never met, it’s even harder when that someone is behind a wall. But in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, the journalist Nathan Thrall makes a virtue of that. The book reports a profoundly difficult story ... made more difficult by where it occurs: On the Palestinian side of Israel’s separation barrier... [Thrall] manages to find drama in the most boring thing the Israelis do—which is bend the situation to their will through administration.”
—Time, named a Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2023

“This brilliant and heartbreaking book is a masterpiece. It reads like a novel, yet is all sadly true. I finished it in tears.”
—James Rebanks, New York Times bestselling author of Pastoral Song

“Thrall captures both the universality and the specificity of the experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation ... the book builds a relentless case that this crash and the ensuing trauma must be remembered. It was all so predictable—and could easily happen again.”
—The Economist, named a Best Book of 2023

“Haunting.”
—The New Republic, named a Best Book of 2023

“Shows with devastating power ... the way that politics seeps into every aspect of the lives of those in Palestine. At a time when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history.”
—The Observer (UK)

“Nathan Thrall has written an amazing work of nonfiction that I devoured…a beautiful book that...is powerful and far reaching in its portrait of life in Israel and Palestine.”
—Geraldine Brooks, The Saturday Paper

“The genius of Thrall’s book lies in its ability to unearth the lives, aspirations, and sentiments of his protagonists.”
—David N. Myers, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Thrall humanizes the consequences of systemic decay.”
—The Los Angeles Times, 10 Books to Read in October

“Like J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground or Javier Cercas’s Anatomy of a Moment, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is digressive narrative nonfiction as a major piece of political art.”
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, LitHub

“Brings the reader as close to...reality as can possibly be done with words.”
—Ahdaf Soueif, Times Literary Supplement

“A brilliant and heart-wrenching book that captures the daily tragedy of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation better than any other I have read. An outstanding achievement and a must read.”
—Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans

“Thrall’s powerful and moving portrayal … of life under Israeli occupation is both a painful reminder of the costs of conflict and, in its insistence on the humanity of its protagonists, both Israeli and Palestinian, a glimmer of hope.”
—Foreign Affairs

“One of the most effective presentations of quotidian injustice I have read, precisely because the story Thrall narrates is not a matter of the gory violence that has become so prevalent in the region since.”
―Samuel Moyn, The New Statesman, named a Best Book of 2023

“Extensive and intimate”
—The Forward, named a Best Jewish Book of 2023  

“Combines heart-wrenching prose with rare political insight.”
—Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens

“Gut-wrenching.”
―The Guardian (Australia)

“A meticulously reported work...painfully poignant.”
―Haaretz

“Difficult to put down.”
—DAWN

“The real power of the book is that it does not try to contort Palestinians into figures indistinguishable from the reader but rather deconstructs the very idea of ‘the other.’”
―Jacobin

“An intricate picture of life under Israeli occupation…weaves analysis, history, and personal stories of individuals on both sides of the Green Line to explain the greater tragedy of the holy land.”
―Foreign Policy

“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama reminded me that the best reporting brings human stories to inhuman systems. I hope many will read it.”
—The Millions, named a Best Book of 2023

“Riveting... An eye-opening and empathetic analysis of a profoundly personal tragedy.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“A heart-wrenching portrait of an unequal society.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This impressive book shows us how everything in these Palestinians’ daily lives—from the mundane to the catastrophic—has been controlled, contained, and shaped under Israeli rule. Amid this struggle to survive, Nathan Thrall documents the best and worst of humanity: pride, bravery, love, stupidity, callousness and cruelty.”
—Sally Hayden, author of The Fourth Time We Drowned

“Thrall’s taut, journalistic account of Abed Salama’s daylong search to discover what has become of his son is an agonizing, infuriating, heartbreaking indictment of Israel’s occupation. …An unforgettable and devastating symphony of pain and outrage and a demand for responsibility.”
—Booklist (starred review), named a Best Book of 2023

“Propels the reader across a geography that is partitioned behind walls and into enclaves, revealing in visceral, human detail what Israeli subjugation means, and how it shapes the most intimate corners of the Palestinian experience. With empathy and grace, Thrall transforms this incomprehensible, avoidable loss into an ode to a father’s love.”
—Tareq Baconi, author of Containing Hamas

“Thrall’s sweeping narrative turns what one might gloss as another depressing headline about a terrible but distant accident into an intimate, infuriating epic.”
—Andrew Leland, The Stacks, named a Best Book of 2023

“[Thrall’s] richly textured retelling…depicts without a didactic moment the fraught realities of life in a divided society.”
―Mother Jones, named a Best Book of 2023

“Propulsive ... a kaleidoscope of the aftermath of a tragedy, told from different viewpoints, with multiple lives coming together, and the tragedy made even more difficult because of obstacles Abed and others face because they are Palestinian. This is an immersive story of an event, with its aftershocks reverberating for years.”
—Bookriot

“An extraordinary and often very moving story…a deeply poignant account.”
—John Freeman, Reaction

“A beautiful, heartbreaking and necessary tale made that much better by the telling.”
—Counterpunch

“A powerful call for empathy and understanding.”
―How to Be Books, Best Books of 2023

“A towering achievement. I’ve not read anything like it. Thrall takes the bureaucracy and infrastructure of apartheid and uses them to tell a painfully emotional, personal story.”
—Omar Robert Hamilton, author of The City Always Wins

“A harrowing eye-opener.”
―The Spectator

“A masterpiece ... an extraordinary achievement ... A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a challenge to ... anyone who does not understand how awful Israel’s occupation truly is. If they read it, and if they are honest, they will change.”
—Mondoweiss

“Could not recommend more strongly.”
—Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

“A book that left me devastated, but full of appreciation for what it achieves...It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the cruel realities of an everyday occupation.”
—The Conversation

“Grips you from start to finish.”
―The Markaz Review

“Gut-wrenching…A ‘Rashomon’-like deep dive into a school bus crash in the West Bank.”
―Boris Kachka, The Los Angeles Times

“A masterful exploration...Thrall is a wonderful storyteller...An unforgettably engrossing narrative that forces the reader to confront uncomfortable truths.”
―Women in Judaism

“I was utterly enthralled by the quality of the writing, the humanity contained within its pages.”
―Nihal Arthanayake, BBC Radio 5

“At one level, this is a granular look at the bureaucracy Salama must deal with under occupation, but Thrall takes a much wider view, speaking with all of the Israelis and Palestinians who intersect with this unbearably sad story.”
―The Atlantic

“Suffused with an unshakeable humanity…a story of great political import.”
―Middle East Report

“Stunning and heartbreaking, in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama Nathan Thrall somehow manages to bypass the barbed wire of politics and partisanship to present a searing picture of what it means to be a Palestinian parent.”
―WYPR, The Weekly Reader

“A mighty book.”
―People’s World

“A reminder of the value of clear-headed analysis in times of crisis.”
―The Literary Review

“A brilliant work of non-fiction. ...For those whose hearts and minds are still open, this is the book.”
―Inside Story

“Renders the struggle over Israel/Palestine at the human scale.”
―Jewish Currents

“A moving testimony of the more mundane forms of violence that define life between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
―Responsible Statecraft, named a Best Book of 2023

“A small private tragedy…becomes a mirror of Israeli-Palestinian relations as they currently stand.”
―Vogue

“If you need a primer on the daily humiliations inflicted on the Palestinian population, you owe it to yourself to read Nathan Thrall’s book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.”
―Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

“Timely and deeply affecting.”
—The Bookseller

“In this luminous story of Palestinians striving to live under Israeli rule, there is much cruelty. But there is also great love—of parents for their children, of lovers for their beloved, and of people for their home. This book is transformative.”
—André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt and Call Me By Your Name

From “one of the best-informed and most trenchant observers of the conflict” (Financial Times), the intimate true story of a deadly accident outside Jerusalem that unravels a tangle of lives, loves, enmities, and histories over the course of one revealing, heartbreaking day.

Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem.

Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.

Immersive and gripping, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine that offers a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth.

“Nathan Thrall does a brilliant job ...his argument is smart and hard to dispute.” ―The New York Times Book Review

“This June, Israel is marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day War. Not surprisingly, a number of new books have appeared in this grim anniversary year.... By far the most cogent... is Nathan Thrall’s The Only Language They Understand, which surveys the last five decades and comes to a remarkable conclusion: the only way to produce some kind of movement toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to apply significant coercive force to the parties involved, and in particular to Israel.” ―The New York Review of Books

“Thrall…is one of the best-informed and most trenchant observers of the conflict.” ―Financial Times

“Life is short, and writings about Israel and the Palestinians can be very, very long. So it’s a good thing there’s Nathan Thrall. An American analyst with a severe allergy to conventional wisdom, Thrall has lived in Jerusalem since 2011, writing dense but rich reports for the International Crisis Group, and now The Only Language They Understand.” ―Time

“Brilliant.” ―Foreign Policy

“Thrall has consistently been one of the sharpest observers of the Israeli-­Palestinian conflict and the United States’ role in trying to end it, and his most recent contribution, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, is true to form. ...The argument is a compelling one, and Thrall expertly marshals historical evidence to demonstrate his thesis that both sides respond to sticks rather than carrots. ...In focusing on the ways in which pressure has forced compromise, Thrall not only uses the historical record to great effect but also appeals to basic common sense. ...one cannot read The Only Language They Understand without acknowledging the power of his argument that force does indeed matter.” ―Foreign Affairs

“Excellent.” ―The National Interest

“Readers of the New York Review of Books and other intellectual publications know Nathan Thrall to be one of the best-informed, most insightful, and least polemical analysts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book’s title announces his bold conclusion: that the status quo will remain in place indefinitely unless the two sides are forced to change it—and no one is prepared to exert such force. ...The Only Language They Understand brings unparalleled clarity to the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and is an essential guide to the history, personalities, and ideas behind the conflict.” ―Jewish Book Council

“Indispensable.” ―The Forward

“A knowledgeable and bold retelling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that forces readers to take a serious and fresh look at their assumptions. Throughout its counterintuitive retelling of this history, it offers an unusually provocative and sometimes startling contribution to the genre.” ―Mosaic Magazine, Best Books of 2018

“Even the most ardent defenders of Israeli policies...should acknowledge Thrall’s mastery to facts on the ground, historical context and diplomatic tactics and strategies on all sides. ... Everyone interested in peace between Israelis and Palestinians will learn something and find something to ponder in this counter-intuitive, controversial and...compelling book.” ―The Jerusalem Post

“Most welcome… A cogent and lucid reconstruction of the obstacles that prevent an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” ―Journal of Palestine Studies

“Thrall’s book is rich with well researched, well argued, and often provocative analyses... [A]n in memoriam to a failed and delusional peace process, a scathing critique against political leaders who have lost touch with their own people and a j’accuse against well-meaning liberals who, despite their best intentions, fail to understand that the occupation and Israel cannot be treated as separate entities.” ―Journal of Peace Research

“Refreshing and overdue… The book serves as a crucial resource for the most significant core issues that occupy the news cycle — from Jerusalem to Gaza. It also gives original and instructive answers to the failure of the peace process that go beyond simply casting blame on one side or another.” ―+972

“Nathan Thrall, an analyst with the International Crisis Group and consummate observer of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adds substantially to our understand of the status quo in his perfectly timed new volume.” ―Tablet

“A troubling and truculent history of the still-stalemated search for peace in the Middle East. ...An assiduous assault on the management of the apparently defunct peace process that has eluded Israel and Palestine.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Thrall makes a persuasive case that instead of leaving the Israelis and Palestinians alone or limply warning of the peril facing Israeli democracy if a two-state solution isn't achieved, the only weapon in the US arsenal that has ever produced meaningful gains on the issue is force―diplomatic, economic, or otherwise.” ―Vice

“Thanks to considerable prepublication buzz, Thrall’s argument in the first chapter is familiar to many Israel-Palestine watchers. ...[Israel] has only made concessions and will only make concessions (for peace or anything else) when it is presented with threats of loss that exceed the value of the concessions demanded. The other chapters are engaging, deeply informative, and even brilliant in their close evaluation of the delicate state of play among Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans. In the process, Thrall surfaces a great deal of information that will be new to most readers and some that will be startling even to close followers of the Israeli-Palestinian saga.” ―Middle East Journal

“Thrall writes very knowledgeably about internal Palestinian affairs. The chapters dealing with the relations between Hamas and Fatah are a model of informative scholarship.” ―Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

“Informed by a deep understanding of US, Israeli and Palestinian politics. It is packed with new ideas and insights, and it poses a serious challenge to the conventional wisdom on the subject.” ―Middle East Eye

“An important new book by Nathan Thrall, The Only Language They Understand, eloquently expresses what has long been clear: that there is no hope of a breakthrough unless the international community forces it on the parties.” ―The Independent

“Nathan Thrall’s commentary on the most intractable dispute of our time is something shocking: it is fair. Into a debate consumed by ferocious passions he enters dispassionately, except that he has a passion for peace. For this reason he is uncommonly trustworthy. His familiarity with the infamous complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian tangle is remarkable, as is his mental composure. This learned and candid book is a genuine contribution to our understanding of an increasingly frightening conflict.”
―Leon Wieseltier

“Both the book and the title of The Only Language They Understand perfectly encapsulate the attitudes of the two sides to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The title also illustrates Thrall’s main thesis: that over the entire hundred years of this conflict, only force or the threat of force, whether military, political, economic, diplomatic or in another form, has obligated the two sides to compromise. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why this conflict is so intractable and remains unresolved.”
―Rashid Khalidi, author of Brokers of Deceit and Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University

“These are the toughest criticisms anywhere of decades of Israeli policy. The failings of the Palestinians are here as well―but the arrows are aimed at Jerusalem. Serious supporters of Israel should have their answers ready―or be prepared to lose debates to opponents quoting Nathan Thrall.”
―Elliott Abrams, Deputy National Security Advisor, George W. Bush administration

“A terrific piece of analysis by a keen and empathic observer of the region.”
―Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Thirteen Days in September 

“Nathan Thrall argues with great power and lucidity that the only language the two sides to the conflict understand is force. This strong view, strongly held by Thrall, has serious political implications. He may be right, he may be wrong, but he must be read by anyone who hasn’t given up the idea and the hope of ending this bloody conflict.”
―Avishai Margalit, author of On Compromise and Rotten Compromises

“For those who look at the Middle East and throw up their hands at a hopeless morass, Nathan Thrall’s brilliant book is a compelling corrective. This most well-informed and well-connected of experts gives rigorous attention to the reality lurking behind the myths: that in this seemingly frozen conflict, carefully applied power and assiduous compulsion have often been the midwives of progress. Eloquent, fact-rich, full of vivid characters, and relentlessly contemporary in its narrative, The Only Language They Understand is a withering indictment of conventional wisdom―and a necessary, essential book.”
―Mark Danner, author of Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

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